I enjoyed Tove Jansson’s novel The Summer Book very much and flipping it through it just now to prepare to write this post, I realized how much I would like to read it again. It’s a book that works quietly, and I think it’s easy to miss some of its effects on a first read. On a basic level the book is about a young girl Sophia and her grandmother, who live, along with Sophia’s father, on an isolated island in Finland. The fact that I noticed but didn’t ponder enough during the first reading is that Sophia’s mother has recently died. This is obviously hugely important, but the book is so quiet about it:

One time in April there was a full moon, and the sea was covered with ice. Sophia woke up and remembered that they had come back to the island and that she had a bed to herself because her mother was dead. The fire was still burning in the stove, and the flames flickered on the ceiling, where the boots were hung up to dry.

And that’s about all the book has to say on the subject, at least directly. But the signs of the mother’s death are everywhere. One of the first things Sophia says to her grandmother is “When are you going to die?” The grandmother says, “Soon. But that is not the least concern of yours.” Except that it is, because the grandmother is the most important figure in Sophia’s life. Her father lives with them doing some kind of work — the introduction to the book tells me it’s sculpture although I didn’t figure this out on my own — but he’s not much of a presence. A little later Sophia finds a skull, and she and her grandmother hang on to it until at the end of the day, they place it in the forest where the evening light catches it. Suddenly, Sophia starts screaming. There’s no explanation about why she does this, but something about the skull must finally have spoken to her about death.

The whole book works in this understated way. There are beautiful descriptions of the island and the ocean, but we learn about the characters almost solely through their words and actions. Sophia and her grandmother spend much of their days playing, and they take this very seriously. With Sophia, this is what one would expect, but the grandmother is just as serious. In one chapter, the grandmother starts carving animals out of driftwood, and Sophia is curious:

“What is it you’re doing?” Sophia asked.

“I’m playing,” Grandmother said.

Sophia crawled into the magic forest and saw everything her grandmother had done.

“Is it an exhibit?” she asked.

But Grandmother said it had nothing to do with sculpture, sculpture was another thing completely. They started gather bones together along the shore.

Later in the book Sophia and her grandmother explore a nearby island where someone has built a new house and posted a “No Trespassing” sign, an act the grandmother believes is rude and ill-bred. So the two of them trespass and end up getting caught: they flee into the woods behind the house but the owner’s dog finds them, and they are forced to show themselves. Fortunately for them, the owner never asks what they were doing there; instead they all behave as though nothing had happened.

It’s an odd scene, but the whole book is like that: it’s as though the family lives in another world entirely where things are slightly different than they are in this one. It’s not a fantasy world, though. The grandmother is aging and has trouble moving about, Sophia is sometimes bored and lonely, occasionally flying into rages, and the father seems the loneliest and most isolated of them all. When other people enter their world, it rarely goes well. Sophia invites a friend, Berenice, to visit the island, but she hates it there, and nobody is sorry when she leaves.

Nature becomes a character in its own right; the descriptions of landscape and plant life are beautiful, but nature can be threatening as well as scenic. There are swarming insects, dangerous gullies, droughts, and storms. One of the most dramatic chapters tells of the family getting stuck away from home during one of the worst storms anyone can remember. Sophia learns about her place in the world: she had asked for a storm and was pleased to have gotten it, until she realizes that people might die. Her grandmother tells her it’s not her fault, but she doesn’t do it in a reassuring way:

“God and you,” Grandmother repeated angrily. “Why should He listen to you, especially, when maybe ten other people prayed for nice weather? And they did, you can count on that.”

“But I prayed first,” Sophia said. “And you can see for yourself they didn’t get nice weather!”

“God,” Grandmother said. “God has so much to do, He doesn’t have time to listen …”

It’s this relationship I loved best about the book: Sophia and her grandmother obviously love each other, but in a way that is honest, real, and sometimes difficult. The grandmother never talks down to or patronizes Sophia, and Sophia uses her relationship with her grandmother to try to understand what has happened to her and to figure out her place in the world. This relationship and the sharp, clear, direct style of Jansson’s writing make the book memorable.

11 responses to “Slaves of Golconda: The Summer Book”

You are so right, this is one book that would benefit from a re-read! I sort of breezed through it but now I feel like I probably missed out a lot of little things that mean a lot. I absolutely loved the fact that their relationship seemed so mature and “real”.

Dorothy, I’ve found this very interesting. Last summer my book group read Jansson’s most recent book, ‘The True Deceiver’ which I found extremely disturbing. It certainly wasn’t a book to which I would ever wish to return and it thoroughly upset me because I had such great memories of her children’s books about the Moomins. I have to say that not all of our group reacted in this way, some of them loved it, but it left me feeling almost disgusted. Reading this I can see that many of the themes that Jansson explores in ‘The True Deceiver’ she has already thought about in great detail in this earlier work but apparently with a somewhat lighter touch. The question now, is do I take the chance and go back and read ‘The Summer Book’ in the hope that I will recapture the love for the author I had as a child, or do I leave well alone? I’ll have to think about it.

Iliana — she gives you so much interesting information in such a quiet way that it’s easy to miss things. It’s a quick book to read, unless you’re really paying attention, in which case it’s not at all! Maybe I will reread this book one day.

Annie — oh, interesting. I don’t know anything about The True Deceiver, so I can’t really say if you’re likely to find this one disturbing or not. It’s hard that after loving her Moomin books you had a difficult time with her other work. I’m very curious about the Moomins and will have to check them out at some point.

Jenclair — group reads are great that way, right? This really is a fabulous book; it seemed that everyone liked it a lot.

Stefanie — I’m glad we agree about their relationship. I was wondering as I wrote my post whether I was missing some darkness in the book. I think, as others have said, she gets the tone just right and thankfully avoids sentimentality.

I’d forgotten about the skull, how odd, but like you and Iliana I think I’d like to read it again. I’d like to pick up even more of the detail, but really I’m dying to go back to a book with such a pleasing tone. I really like what you said about the world being slightly unreal, but not a fantasy. It’s strange how much connection you can feel with the characters, despite them living in what feels like a bit of a bubble.

I hate to admit to being so unobservant, but I didn’t catch on right away that the mother had died. It explained a lot of things later when I did figure it out. I think this is very much a book that would be good to reread. I think I was expecting something a bit fluffier, though I am glad it wasn’t. It was a strange little world–but an interesting one!

"…whatever these futilities of mine may be, I have no intention of hiding them, any more than I would a bald and grizzled portrait of myself just because the artist had painted not a perfect face but my own. Anyway these are my humours, my opinions: I give them as things which I believe, not as things to be believed. My aim is to reveal my own self, which may well be different tomorrow if I am initiated into some new business which changes me." Michel de Montaigne

"If I am asked to explain why I learned the bicycle I should say I did it as an act of grace, if not of actual religion." Frances E. Willard